Posted
by
Soulskillon Sunday December 25, 2011 @06:34AM
from the new-wireless-acronym-time dept.

New submitter ptmartin01 writes "The unused spectrum now assigned to television broadcast has been made available for public use by the FCC. This is going to be used for wireless applications (PDF) with implications that it will generate as much investment as the previous Wi-Fi spectrum. It also happens to be the last available spectrum to be exploited."

Throughout the development of the "white space" spectrum, one thing that has never been clear to me is what it's going to be used for. It keeps getting compared to Wi-Fi, but then you'll have articles like this one that talk about commercial uses.

So which is it? Am I going to be able to drop a router in my house and run my wireless LAN on different frequencies, or is this just going to be another segment of licensed spectrum for selling wireless broadband?

So what if I haul that old, dusty analog TV out of the attic, switch it on and tune it to one of these new applications? What will I see? Strange, weird pulsating patterns? Or garbled snow and fuzzy sounds?

Will I be able to tell the difference between that mess, and usual broadcast television content?

Maybe the old TV can be used as a Lava Lamp effect light? It would be interesting to see how the television circuitry tries to interpret these new application coded signals as television signals.

it's also a little bit of BS - there is a tremendous amount of spectrum, not only is there spectrum that is inefficiently used there is also spectrum that is just beginning to become useable due to advances in technology. I hardly believe that white space TV spectrum is the last bastion of wireless communications.....

I'm certain someone knows exactly what frequency ranges are being discussed, but apparently no one (including the FCC) really want to make that information available. "White spaces" is a marketing term that doesn't inform.

When spectrum is unlicensed, it can be used for both commercial and non-commercial uses. My ISP operates its end-user links on 900 MHz unlicensed spectrum, but its backhauls are on highly-directional 2.4 GHz unlicensed links. That, of course, does not mean that 2.4 GHz cannot also be used for wifi in the home, or that 900 MHz cannot also be used for cordless phones. (In fact, I had to replace one of my cordless phones when I got my Internet connection because the two would interfere badly. If the phone was on the exact same frequency as the Internet, it'd knock the Internet out, but if it was merely adjacent, I would hear modem sounds on the phone.)